It’s been interesting to see the incredibly wide variety of opinions about the hot topic of MOOCs the past two years. As part of a presentation last week at a faculty development conference, I compiled some articles on MOOCs and arranged them from the most extremely “pro” MOOC articles, to the most negative and critical...

What European Leaders in EdTech Think of the State of MOOCs

... I talked to several European edtech leaders (representatives from FutureLearn, JISC, Open University, UCL Institute of Education, and so on) to get a “pulse” on the state of online learning in 2016...

... To facilitate the development of MOOCs, we have put together a set of ten simple rules based on our experiences to give you tips on what to look out for and what to avoid. It must be said, however, that this is not an exercise for the faint-hearted, as MOOC development entails a considerable amount of work...

... Can digital learning of MOOC be applied to Iran and other developing countries. What are the pedagogical problems? MOOCs might not be as efficient for students in developing countries, they cannot feel the benefit of MOOCs due to a number of issues...

...The main purpose of this research is to contribute to the discussion about the future of inclusive online learning, by proposing a software design to incorporate features in MOOC platforms to enable, support and guide authors toward conceptualizing, designing, building and testing accessible MOOCs. We also present the results of an evaluation of the accessibility issues of Studio, the edX course-authoring software, based on ATAG 2.0.

Stanford University has stepped up its focus on online education with the creation of a dedicated office for online learning, to be headed up by new vice provost John Mitchell. The university said the development, which is part of the larger Stanford Online initiative, signals a restructuring of the university in the face of global, economic and social transformations...

... Career development is the main goal of MOOCs in many organizations today. Employees have the opportunity to increase their knowledge and gain useful skills that enable them to become more effective in their roles. And companies are investing a lot in this effort, leveraging a more skilled workforce to land bigger and better clients, be more innovative, and be viewed as leaders of industry....

Open education is at the core of our work and with many countries going back to school this week, we wanted to kick off our #backtoschool week some more practical advice about how you can use open educational resources in your classroom. From textbooks to courses to entire degree programs, the OER movement has your back with free, CC licensed materials that will help your students access and keep high quality, effective learning resources. Supporting OER means...

... So MOOCs are gradually being transformed from virtual classrooms to a Netflix-like experience. Most are now offered in a self-paced format or, in the case of Coursera courses, switched to a regular schedule, with new sessions starting automatically on a bi-weekly or monthly basis. If a student can’t finish a session, all their work is simply transferred to a new session.This has led to a significant increase in the number of courses students can register for and start almost immediately...

Coursera, the education tech platform that offers online courses from prestigious colleges and universities, is branching into corporate learning and development and has officially launched Coursera for Business today.

But Thrun and other MOOC founders seem less than concerned about living up to their earlier, lofty rhetoric or continuing that tradition of bringing education to an underserved population. True, they haven’t entirely abandoned their rhetoric about equal access to educational opportunities. But they’ve shifted to what’s becoming a more familiar Silicon Valley narrative about the future of employability: a cheap and precarious labor force. That’s the unfortunate reality of “Uber for Education.”...

... The first online classes were offered starting in the 1980s and over the last 30 years the internet has been used to offer lessons at all levels all over the world. These new technologies have changed the way educators look at learning. The need to adapt to students working from home and at a distance caused educational institutions to examine their practices more closely...

... To facilitate the development of MOOCs, we have put together a set of ten simple rules based on our experiences to give you tips on what to look out for and what to avoid. It must be said, however, that this is not an exercise for the faint-hearted, as MOOC development entails a considerable amount of work...

...The impulse to share knowledge in a free environment also is not new. In many ways MOOCs and Open Courseware and Wikipedia and Creative Commons and Google/YouTube are all part of the same project – envisioned by visionaries such as Richard Stallman, media producers behind the start of public broadcasting here and abroad, much earlier, even, by publishers active centuries ago in the Enlightenment, and even earlier, in ancient Alexandria under the Ptolemaic kings. The vision? ...

Fabulous critical talk on MOOCs by Janesh Sanzgiri. In 2013 MOOCs were suggested as the silicon valley salvation of education, including the developing world. But the reality is that most MOOC participants are not the underprivileged class...

Going on eight years since MOOCs first entered the scene, massive open online courses have gone from cameras at the back of U.S. college classrooms to several full-fledged ecosystems in the global industry of online learning. Touted initially by creators for growing opportunities in the verticals of Distance Education, Lifelong Learning, Continuing Education, and making a college education both free and accessible, MOOCs have also been criticized heavily by established academics for sanctioning edutainment, teaching methods that are unprofessional, as well as the corporatization of higher education....

... Clear, concise Data Visualization provides an evidence-based analysis of educational experiences that can be a powerful catalyst for change and improved outcomes. Interestingly, they also provide an opportunity to capture insights that have the potential to improve in-person learning experiences...

... A new study from the University of Washington, The Advancing MOOCs for Development Initiative: An examination of MOOC usage for professional workforce development outcomes in Colombia, the Philippines, & South Africa, has done just that. They have studied 1400 MOOC learners from Colombia, the Philippines and South Africa and looked at completion rates, attitudes and satisfaction as well as asking employers about their views on MOOCs as valid credentials on the labour market. What they found was in stark contrast to the commonly held view that MOOCs have missed their mark...

... “Our goal is to make knowledge easily accessible through the medium of technology,” says Abdul Basit, COO at UpSkill while talking to ProPakistani. “We want to make learning fun through scientifically approved principles of learning.”..

The paper then analyzes the published scientific literature that concerns the most significant studies about the quality of MOOC and particularly those dedicated to quality enhancement. The conclusion of this analysis is that the relevant literature about MOOC’s evaluation is ...

The hype has faded for the massive courses, and their leading commercial proponents have moved on to other gigs. But they’ve left a legacy of the transformative potential of online technology in teaching.

... Of course, there are still plenty of people interested in producing and taking MOOCs, but the founders of the American companies that create them have lately become about as scarce as the crew of the Mary Celeste. In 2014, Coursera founder Andrew Ng left day-to-day activities that company to join the Chinese search engine firm Baidu (although he remains Coursera’s Chairman of the Board). Earlier this year, Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity, departed that companyearlier this year perhaps frustrated by what he once famously called its “lousy product.” Last week, Coursera’s other co-founder, Daphne Koller, exited in order to join a subsidiary of Google...

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